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Episodes

Adam Gopnik - a lifelong fan of Bob Dylan - muses on Dylan's "utterly predictable lack of gratitude" towards his Nobel Prize.
"The terrible and intriguing truth", he writes, is that "people are tragically impressed by indifference...and pitifully contemptuous of the charming".
The Dylans of this world, Gopnik says "impress us as the true egotists we secretly are".
Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Adam Gopnik muses on liberals and liberalism - and why liberalism is so despised.
"At a moment when it seems likely to be drowned out in America" he writes, "I shall make a small forlorn effort to speak its truths".
Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Adam Gopnik asks what hope is there of a liberal, open society in America during the next 4 years.
He argues that Americans must hold to the faith that liberal politics really do rise from the ground up.

Roger Scruton assesses some of the reasons behind Donald Trump's victory.
And he asks why many who intended to vote for Donald Trump would not have confessed to their intention.
"They wanted change," writes Scruton. "A change in the whole agenda of government".

Adam Gopnik reflects on why he believes a victory for Donald Trump would be a disaster for America.
The American Presidential election "posits a simple eternal human confrontation between sensible and crazy", he writes.
He says we must not pretend that the rise of Trump is essentially a "people's revolt" or a movement of the dispossessed.
Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Howard Jacobson argues that dissatisfaction with life is essential for the health of the human spirit.
"It might come to outweigh other emotions to the point where it is detrimental to the vigour of an individual or a society, but without it there is no vigour at all."
Producer: Sheila Cook.

Howard Jacobson applauds the granting of an appeal by Shylock in a mock trial in Venice as a symbolic revoking of a bad decision in Shakespeare's play.
"It's natural to rage against wrong decisions, miscarrriages of justice or the inclemencies of nature, but the more fanciful of us go further and imagine that some power will intervene and make things right again."
Producer: Sheila Cook.

Howard Jacobson applauds the playwright Tom Stoppard's attack on the ignorance of the average audience, arguing we should not only aspire to be educated ourselves but should not be offended by the evidence of education in others.
"We are an entangled species; we are not to be unknotted easily. When we turn our backs on difficulty in art, we turn our backs on who we are."
Producer: Sheila Cook.

Howard Jacobson deplores the fashion for "whooping" as a mark of approval, and sees it as a species of social blackmail.
"The whoop is on an errand to keep things simple. That which strikes audiences as true because it is what they think already, elicits a whoop."
Producer: Sheila Cook.

John Gray reflects on the controversial "safe spaces" policy being pursued by some universities.
It may have been devised to ensure that people of all identities are entitled to a tolerant environment ...but John Gray argues that the policy not only threatens a fundamental liberal value but represents a demand to be sheltered from human reality.
He says the point of education used to be to learn how to live well in full awareness of the disorder of life. "A lack of realism ...was considered not just an intellectual failing but also a moral flaw".
He says we ignore this lesson of history at our peril.
Producer: Adele Armstrong.

John Gray assesses what lies behind the Trump phenomenon and the remarkable political upheaval that could - possibly - see Donald Trump propelled into the White House.
From the start, he says, Trump's campaign has been an audacious experiment in mass persuasion. "His uncouth language, megalomaniac self-admiration and strangely coloured hair....all deliberately cultivated" to help him profit from the popular resentment against the elites of the main parties.
"Whatever happens", writes Gray, "there will be no return to pre-Trump normalcy".
Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Wheelchair user, Tom Shakespeare, reflects on what it feels like to be dependent on others.
He says care often leaves the recipient in a devalued state.
He calls for society to respond to the challenge of delivering help "without creating domination and infantilisation" and for care to be funded properly.
Producer: Adele Armstrong.

John Gray muses on what his idea of heaven is....and why it shouldn't be a perfect world.
History teaches us that trying to create a perfect society leads to hell on earth, he writes.
"But dreams of a perfect world don't fail because human beings are incurably flawed. They fail because human beings are more complicated and interesting that their dreams of perfection".

Tom Shakespeare argues that the upcoming refurbishment work on the Palace of Westminster provides a perfect opportunity for taking it out of London.
"My vision is of the Houses of Parliament as a travelling caravan, a charabanc of power, spending a year here and a year there throughout our United Kingdom".
He says it would enable our leaders to see at first hand what they are legislating about and who they are legislating for.
He quotes Cromwell at the sacking of the Rump Parliament in 1653: "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go"!
Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Tom Shakespeare - a new dog owner - reflects on what dogs can teach us about contentment.
Remembering his childhood obsession with the Peanuts cartoon, he quotes Snoopy "My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm Happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?"
Dogs, writes Tom, have a much greater capacity for contentment than people and we can all learn from this.
Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self reflects on the joys of genealogy - truffling in census returns and parish records and establishing "our genuine links to multiple generations of nonentities"!
"As a passionate Londoner", he writes, "I wanted to establish when the first Self had arrived in the city".
Entire family sagas, he says, are today vanishing into thin air, in an era of nuclear families. Gone are those generations of extended families where over a cup of tea, the same old stories were told about the same old relatives.
Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self explores what's wrong with modern art.
"I've been responsible for a fair amount of absolutely total nonsense in my time", he writes, but says most contemporary art is little more than "overvalued tosh and useless ephemera".
Instead of a world where Russian oligarchs "buy artworks by the metric tonne and plaster them on the walls of their vulgar houses", he calls for a genuine understanding of art where - once again - we become "capable of conveying and explaining the subtle ambiguities of genuine art".
Producer: Adele Armstrong.

AL Kennedy reflects on how being able to communicate clearly is the work of a lifetime. She argues that the present school testing regime could have a catastrophic effect on our children's ability to find their voice.
Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self explains why he finds it hard to always act his age.
"To alternate between being an errant child and a corrective adult must, I think, be intrinsic to the human condition."
Producer: Sheila Cook.

Tom Shakespeare gives a very personal view of the implications for society of a prenatal screening technology due to be announced shortly.
Tom inherited the genetic condition, achondroplasia, or restricted growth from his father and passed it on to both his children.
Soon we will have to decide, he writes, what sort of people we are prepared to accept in our families and in our society.
Producer: Adele Armstrong.